When legendary rapper Ice Cube was growing up, movies were powered by soundtracks. Some of the musical compilations ended up becoming more famous than the movies, from Footloose or the original Top Gun to Prince’s groundbreaking album, Purple Rain. But then, after a while, soundtracks started going away, and Cube knows the answer to why (he will explain more in a moment). But his latest movie to open in theaters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, boasts an incredible banger of a soundtrack, with iconic hip-hop tracks like “No Diggity” from Blackstreet and the outstanding Tribe Called Quest with their hit “Can I Kick It?” But no music by Ice Cube. What’s up with that?
We got a chance to speak with Ice Cube ahead of the release of the animated feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, in which he voices the main villain Superfly (and apparently cost the production more than was expected in rights fees thanks to his improv skills). And as he talked about all of the different reasons why TMNT is worth a trip to the movie theaters, we started talking about soundtracks, and the ones that he wore out as a kid. He told us:
Oh yeah man, growing up watching Car Wash. Car Wash has one of the best soundtracks ever made. You know, movies like Superfly. Hey, no pun intended. A great, amazing soundtrack by Isaac Hayes. Saturday Night Fever (had an) amazing, crazy soundtrack with Bee Gees and everything in between. Those were the ones that were incredible to me.
Ice Cube mentions some of the stone cold classics. The Car Wash soundtrack that he mentioned came from the 1976 movie of the same name, and featured a number of popular songs by the artist Rose Royce. In addition, it would mix in dialogue from comedian Richard Pryor, and contributions from the Pointer Sisters. That album led to three Billboard R&B Top Ten singles: "Car Wash", "I Wanna Get Next to You", and "I'm Going Down.”
If you are an audience member of a certain age, you owned a movie soundtrack. Probably on a cassette. Maybe on a vinyl LP. So what happened to those days, when the movie soundtrack had the opportunity to produce songs that charted on radio and the Billboard rankings. Ice Cube has some insight, as someone with experience in the music business. When we asked him why movies stopped producing accompanying soundtracks, Ice Cube told us:
What happened was, record sales went down with the invention of the Internet. And, they’re pretty expensive to create, when you put a song in a film. Depends on how long you use, it could be pretty expensive. So I think that they tried to cut their losses. But I’m bringing the soundtrack back. Ninja Turtles is bringing the soundtrack back, baby.
He isn’t exaggerating. Part of the fun of seeing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is listening to those vintage age tracks through the speakers in a Dolby auditorium. We talked about the power of the movie’s soundtrack in our official Turtles review. But we also celebrated the jokes that were worked into the screenplay by executive producer and writer Seth Rogen, and the chemistry of the kids hired to play the Turtles on screen.
The story of the summer recently has been Barbenheimer, and how the two films Barbie and Oppenheimer have dominated audience participation and cleaned up at the box office. Wr will be curious to see if Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem or any of the other upcoming 2023 movies can cut into the success of that double feature, and steal some of the attention back.
